In Australia, again.
I think I have a cold.
(This post has the exact same title as one from last year, except in reverse. I really must be jetlagged to find that amusing.)
Monday, 23 January 2012
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Blue Ball Machine
It's sorta like a Rube Goldberg machine, only insane.
But check out all those details! Those hypnotising, hypnotising details.
But check out all those details! Those hypnotising, hypnotising details.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Unpublished Post: In the New Year
(Note from the future: I found this post in my drafts, it was never published for any reason that I can see.)
The (Chinese) New Year is almost upon us! I'm irrationally excited because this is the Year of the Dragon, and I'm a dragon. (This also means that my age this year will be a multiple of 12.)
I discovered that the Today newspaper publishes a Sudoku puzzle almost daily. Sudoku puzzles are fun! I've even gotten the hang of the 5-star difficulty ones, and no longer have to slave for 3 hours over them.
I recently had some Kinokuniya vouchers to spare, so I got hold of Black Jack volumes 16 and 17. Black Jack is a manga series about a renegade surgeon with incredible skills and a tendency to be involved in the most bizarre of medical situations. (Building a little girl out of a teratoid cystoma? Surgery on a computer? Surgery on himself while suffering from a parasitic disease and being attacked by wild dingoes in the Australian outback? All in a day's work for Dr. Black Jack.) The stories are well-written with a balance of humour, seriousness and poignancy. In spite of Dr. Black Jack's almost godlike skills, he cannot save everyone, and his personal life is beset with tragedy. Yet there are the moments of fourth-wall breaking silliness, triumph and sheer awesomeness. (Self-surgery! Dingoes, I'm telling you!)
Also, the art is excellent. Poo to all those people who think art has to be realistic to be good. Black Jack is unashamedly cartoony, and yet there's a brilliance about the composition of each panel, even the panel layout as a whole. (In one story, a ship is rocking badly in a storm, tossing its passengers back and forth. The panels angle diagonally and even crisscross to reflect the movement.)
tl;dr Black Jack is an awesome manga about an awesome doctor, definitely a series I recommend.
The (Chinese) New Year is almost upon us! I'm irrationally excited because this is the Year of the Dragon, and I'm a dragon. (This also means that my age this year will be a multiple of 12.)
I discovered that the Today newspaper publishes a Sudoku puzzle almost daily. Sudoku puzzles are fun! I've even gotten the hang of the 5-star difficulty ones, and no longer have to slave for 3 hours over them.
I recently had some Kinokuniya vouchers to spare, so I got hold of Black Jack volumes 16 and 17. Black Jack is a manga series about a renegade surgeon with incredible skills and a tendency to be involved in the most bizarre of medical situations. (Building a little girl out of a teratoid cystoma? Surgery on a computer? Surgery on himself while suffering from a parasitic disease and being attacked by wild dingoes in the Australian outback? All in a day's work for Dr. Black Jack.) The stories are well-written with a balance of humour, seriousness and poignancy. In spite of Dr. Black Jack's almost godlike skills, he cannot save everyone, and his personal life is beset with tragedy. Yet there are the moments of fourth-wall breaking silliness, triumph and sheer awesomeness. (Self-surgery! Dingoes, I'm telling you!)
Also, the art is excellent. Poo to all those people who think art has to be realistic to be good. Black Jack is unashamedly cartoony, and yet there's a brilliance about the composition of each panel, even the panel layout as a whole. (In one story, a ship is rocking badly in a storm, tossing its passengers back and forth. The panels angle diagonally and even crisscross to reflect the movement.)
tl;dr Black Jack is an awesome manga about an awesome doctor, definitely a series I recommend.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
MMXII
Happy New Year!
According to certain people, the world ends this year. End of the year or no, I prefer to take a leaf from Pascal's book, and continue with the assumption that the world isn't going to end.
I tend to take some time and reflect, at the end of the year. Last year I was lonely, my life spinning out of my control, and I was unsure of what would happen to me. Last year's reflective entry had a tone of desperation which makes me wince now, because I can clearly see the mistakes I was making and they shouldn't have happened.
Then again, hindsight is always like that, isn't it?
This year, I pulled myself up, out of the morass I'd watered for myself. I learnt to accept myself, and to live, really live. I think I grew up more this year than I have before. I think this was the year I finally became an adult.
Last year I wrote that there's never any time. This year I realised that time isn't a commodity which needs to be spent.
I wonder what I will think next year?
To the new year.
According to certain people, the world ends this year. End of the year or no, I prefer to take a leaf from Pascal's book, and continue with the assumption that the world isn't going to end.
I tend to take some time and reflect, at the end of the year. Last year I was lonely, my life spinning out of my control, and I was unsure of what would happen to me. Last year's reflective entry had a tone of desperation which makes me wince now, because I can clearly see the mistakes I was making and they shouldn't have happened.
Then again, hindsight is always like that, isn't it?
This year, I pulled myself up, out of the morass I'd watered for myself. I learnt to accept myself, and to live, really live. I think I grew up more this year than I have before. I think this was the year I finally became an adult.
Last year I wrote that there's never any time. This year I realised that time isn't a commodity which needs to be spent.
I wonder what I will think next year?
To the new year.
Monday, 26 December 2011
A Complaint
I have noticed that my fellow countrymen enjoy complaining a lot. It is very annoying.
Don't get me wrong, complaints have a definite place in an organised society. They help to highlight inadequacies which need to be rectified. As they are a form of feedback, they aid in the optimisation of various processes. Complaints are useful things.
My complaint concerns empty complaints (what my father would refer to as "coffeeshop plotting"). This is when people sit around in groups and make mass complaints about various things which regulatory or legislative bodies are allegedly responsible for, and follow up with sweeping statements as to what needs to be rectified, without consideration as to how these rectifications may be viably carried out. The implication is that someone else should take care of the matter.
You know what? This is lazy. This is irresponsible. If you complain without taking any practical action, you are just being self-indulgent. And if it is a matter which is so minor that no practical action is needed, or that no further action is needed because practical actions are already in motion, maybe you shouldn't be complaining.
We have a nice thing going on in this country. How about stepping up ourselves to correct all the things that need correcting, and appreciating the things that don't?
Don't get me wrong, complaints have a definite place in an organised society. They help to highlight inadequacies which need to be rectified. As they are a form of feedback, they aid in the optimisation of various processes. Complaints are useful things.
My complaint concerns empty complaints (what my father would refer to as "coffeeshop plotting"). This is when people sit around in groups and make mass complaints about various things which regulatory or legislative bodies are allegedly responsible for, and follow up with sweeping statements as to what needs to be rectified, without consideration as to how these rectifications may be viably carried out. The implication is that someone else should take care of the matter.
You know what? This is lazy. This is irresponsible. If you complain without taking any practical action, you are just being self-indulgent. And if it is a matter which is so minor that no practical action is needed, or that no further action is needed because practical actions are already in motion, maybe you shouldn't be complaining.
We have a nice thing going on in this country. How about stepping up ourselves to correct all the things that need correcting, and appreciating the things that don't?
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Blue Airport
(This was originally written in the departure lounge of Tullamarine Airport.)
Airports. Are. Boring.
I’ve been down to the liquor stores, and the cafés, and the speciality shops with the strange chocolates and cosmetics. There’s only so much shopping you can do before you never want to see another duty-free store again.
Also, bookstores. Normally I love bookstores – I spent an hour at one the other day – but the airport ones seem to carry books I would never want to read, for one reason or another. (Twilight graphic novel? Really?)
I’m sitting in the departure lounge right now, my aeroplane sitting in the sun a bare twenty metres away, me in air-conditioned, soft-carpeted comfort, and I am bored.
Think of how the aeroplane must feel.
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Endings
Somehow, the end of the year feels like the end of the year. It's probably just my sentimentality talking, since here in the Southern Hemisphere summer's just starting, and if anything, summer is a middle, not a beginning or end. But the year is winding down, and I find myself running through memories - both happy and sad - and feeling a little wistful.
Today our lab had our Christmas gathering, complete with a lot of food and the customary Stealing of Presents. I can't believe it's been a year since the last one. How many people have left? How much has changed? Our gathering was in the exact same room as the last time, but this time I sat on the opposite side of the table. It's the littlest things.
Every year, my co-supervisor tells the story of the one PhD student who went home for the holidays and never came back. There's a portrait of her in the lab, on one of the high shelves. Every year we are entreated to be careful, and please come back in the new year. Every year I shiver, afraid it might be my turn, and it's not so much the fear of dying as the fear of letting everyone down.
Endings, endings, endings. My last day in the lab today, tomorrow I head off with a bag in hand and another on my back. Adventure and homecoming all at once, and did you know that home can be more than one place?
We deal. We always deal. But now, with the afternoon light shining bright over the buildings (home) and through the leaves, there's an ache in my heart.
Today our lab had our Christmas gathering, complete with a lot of food and the customary Stealing of Presents. I can't believe it's been a year since the last one. How many people have left? How much has changed? Our gathering was in the exact same room as the last time, but this time I sat on the opposite side of the table. It's the littlest things.
Every year, my co-supervisor tells the story of the one PhD student who went home for the holidays and never came back. There's a portrait of her in the lab, on one of the high shelves. Every year we are entreated to be careful, and please come back in the new year. Every year I shiver, afraid it might be my turn, and it's not so much the fear of dying as the fear of letting everyone down.
Endings, endings, endings. My last day in the lab today, tomorrow I head off with a bag in hand and another on my back. Adventure and homecoming all at once, and did you know that home can be more than one place?
We deal. We always deal. But now, with the afternoon light shining bright over the buildings (home) and through the leaves, there's an ache in my heart.
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